It was not the first time she had snubbed him during their short acquaintance, and then and there he told himself that he had a long score to settle with this girl, and he would settle it with a vengeance some day, but he had yet his game to win, and for the present he must play the part of an adoring lover, which was very repugnant to his feelings.
He looked at the slim slip of a girl the winning of whom meant a fortune to him, if she could be won quickly, and commenced the attack in another way, and more adroitly.
“So fair, so cold and so heartless,” he murmured. “Cold as yonder lady moon breaking away from the clouds that would fain clasp her and hold her; but the moon has not so true a lover in the clouds as you have in me, little Jess. I pray you listen to me, for I must speak and tell you all that is in my heart—or die!” he added, dramatically.
An amused laugh broke from the girl’s fresh red lips as she looked up into the handsome, cynical face.
“Ah, if you were less heartless, Jess,” he sighed. “But even the hardest heart may sometimes suffer, and your day may come. Perhaps you may experience some day the love that I feel now, and if the object of your affection laughs at you in your face for your folly in loving, then you will know what I am suffering to-night.”
“I did not mean to do anything so positively rude as that!” declared Jess, “but somehow this whole transaction seems so very ridiculous to me, just as if I were a bale of tobacco put up for a purchaser. You were to come here and look me over, and if I half suited you, you would marry me, because that was the condition of that dreadful will. But I tell you here and now that I have something to say in the matter—a voice to raise—since my future happiness is at stake. All the money your uncle left could not make me marry a man I did not love. And I do not love you, that is certain, Mr. Dinsmore. And what’s more, I never will. Marriage between us is, therefore, impossible. Speak no more of it, for it can never be, I tell you.”
He was silent from sheer rage. He knew if he opened his lips to speak he would curse her as she stood there before him in the bright, white moonlight. Was ever so splendid a fortune lost! and all through the willful caprice of a girl. It fairly drove him mad to think of it—ay, mad—and desperate.
CHAPTER XVII.
WAS IT THE DECREE OF FATE?
“Mark well, who wed should give the hand
With undivided heart, and stand